Near-Infrared Variability Study of the Central 2.3 arcmin x 2.3 arcmin of the Galactic Centre I. Catalog of Variable Sources

We used four-year baseline HST/WFC3 IR observations of the Galactic Centre in the F153M band (1.53 micron) to identify variable stars in the central ~2.3'x2.3' field. We classified 3845 long-term (periods from months to years) and 76 short-term (periods of a few days or less) variables among a total sample of 33070 stars. For 36 of the latter ones, we also derived their periods (<3 days). Our catalog not only confirms bright long period variables and massive eclipsing binaries identified in previous works, but also contains many newly recognized dim variable stars. For example, we found \delta Scuti and RR Lyrae stars towards the Galactic Centre for the first time, as well as one BL Her star (period < 1.3 d). We cross-correlated our catalog with previous spectroscopic studies and found that 319 variables have well-defined stellar types, such as Wolf-Rayet, OB main sequence, supergiants and asymptotic giant branch stars. We used colours and magnitudes to infer the probable variable types for those stars without accurately measured periods or spectroscopic information. We conclude that the majority of unclassified variables could potentially be eclipsing/ellipsoidal binaries and Type II Cepheids. Our source catalog will be valuable for future studies aimed at constraining the distance, star formation history and massive binary fraction of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster.Comment: has been accepted to be published in MNRAS, 64 pages, 26 figures. The complete lists of table 3, 4, 8 and 9 will be published onlin

Near-Infrared Variability Study of the Central 2.3 arcmin x 2.3 arcmin of the Galactic Centre II. Identification of RR Lyrae Stars in the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster

Because of strong and spatially highly variable interstellar extinction and extreme source crowding, the faint (K>15) stellar population in the Milky Way's nuclear cluster is still poorly studied. RR Lyrae stars provide us with a tool to estimate the mass of the oldest, relative dim stellar population. Recently, we analyzed HST/WFC3/IR observations of the central 2.3'x2.3' of the Milky Way and found 21 variable stars with periods between 0.2 and 1d. Here, we present a further comprehensive analysis of these stars. The period-luminosity relationship of RR Lyrae is used to derive their extinctions and distances. Using multiple approaches, we classify our sample as four RRc, four RRab and three candidates, ten binaries. Especially, the four RRabs show sawtooth light curves and fall exactly onto the Oosterhoff I division in the Bailey diagram. Compared to the RRabs reported by Minniti et al, 2016, our new RRabs have higher extinction (A_K>1.8) and should be closer to the Galactic Centre. The extinction and distance of one RRab match those for the nuclear star cluster given in previous works. We perform simulations and find that after correcting for incompleteness, there could be no more than 40 RRabs within the nuclear star cluster and in our field-of-view. Through comparing with the known globular clusters of the Milky Way, we estimate that if there exists an old, metal-poor (-1.5<[Fe/H]<-1) stellar population in the Milky Way nuclear star cluster on a scale of 5x5pc, then it contributes at most 4.7x10^5 solar mass, i.e., ~18% of the stellar mass.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figures. The paper has been accepted to be published in MNRA

Morocco as a possible domestication center for barley: biochemical and agromorphological evidence.

The distribution of genetic variants of a group of low molecular weight, chloroform-methanol soluble proteins (CM proteins), among Moroccan and non-Moroccan accessions of Hordeum spontaneum and among selections from several Moroccan landraces of H. vulgare and cultivars of the same species with widespread European origin, suggests that domestication of barley might have taken place in Morocco. An agromorphological characterization of the H. spontaneum accessions further supports this hypothesis. The possible Moroccan origin of the French cultivar Hatif de Grignon and of several Spanish 6-rowed barleys is also presented

Influence of Surface Chemistry on the Electrochemical Performance of Biomass-Derived Carbon Electrodes for its Use as Supercapacitors

The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/12/15/2458/s1, Figure S1. N2 adsorption and desorption isotherms at 77K of CK-series samples. Figure S2: High resolution XPS deconvoluted spectra in the corresponding regions: (a) C1s, (b) O1s, (c) N1s and (d) S2p3/2 for the activated carbons prepared from Custard apple tree wood (CK-Serie). Figure S3: High resolution XPS deconvoluted spectra in the corresponding regions: (a) C1s, (b) O1s, (c) N1s and (d) S2p3/2 for the activated carbons prepared from Fig tree wood (FK-Serie). Figure S4: High resolution XPS deconvoluted spectra in the corresponding regions: (a) C1s, (b) O1s, (c) N1s and (d) S2p3/2 for the activated carbons prepared from Olive tree wood (OK-Serie).first_page settings Open AccessFeature PaperArticle Influence of Surface Chemistry on the Electrochemical Performance of Biomass-Derived Carbon Electrodes for its Use as Supercapacitors by Abdelhakim Elmouwahidi 1 [OrcID] , Esther Bailón-García 1, Luis A. Romero-Cano 2 [OrcID] , Ana I. Zárate-Guzmán 3, Agustín F. Pérez-Cadenas 1,* [OrcID] and Francisco Carrasco-Marín 1 [OrcID] 1 Research Group in Carbon Materials, Inorganic Chemistry Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, Campus Fuente Nueva s/n. 18071 Granada, Spain 2 Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Av. Patria 1201, Zapopan, Jalisco C. P. 45129, Mexico 3 Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico en Electroquímica (CIDETEQ) S.C., Parque Tecnológico Sanfandila, Pedro Escobedo, Querétaro 760703, Mexico * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Materials 2019, 12(15), 2458; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12152458 Received: 28 June 2019 / Revised: 31 July 2019 / Accepted: 1 August 2019 / Published: 2 August 2019 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Element-Doped Functional Carbon-based Materials) Download PDF Browse Figures Cite This Paper Abstract Activated carbons prepared by chemical activation from three different types of waste woods were treated with four agents: melamine, ammonium carbamate, nitric acid, and ammonium persulfate, for the introduction of nitrogen and oxygen groups on the surface of materials. The results indicate that the presence of the heteroatoms enhances the capacitance, energy density, and power density of all samples. The samples treated with ammonium persulfate show the maximum of capacitance of 290 F g−1 while for the melamine, ammonium carbamate, and nitric acid treatments, the samples reached the maximum capacitances values of 283, 280, and 455 F g−1 respectively. This remarkable electro-chemical performance, as the high specific capacitances can be due to several reasons: i) The excellent and adequate textural characteristics makes possible a large adsorption interface for electrolyte to form the electrical double layer, leading to a great electrochemical double layer capacitance. ii) The doping with hetero-atoms enhances the surface interaction of these materials with the aqueous electrolyte, increasing the accessibility of electrolyte ions. iii) The hetero-atoms groups can also provide considerable pseudo-capacitance improving the overall capacitance.This work was supported by FEDER and Spanish MINECO (grant number CTQ-2013-44789-R); and Junta de Andalucía (grant numbers P12-RNM-2892, RNM172)

Computer simulations of VANETs using realistic city topologies

Researchers in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) commonly use simulation to test new algorithms and techniques. This is the case because of the high cost and labor involved in deploying and testing vehicles in real outdoor scenarios. However, when determining the factors that should be taken into account in these simulations, some factors such as realistic road topologies and presence of obstacles are rarely addressed. In this paper, we first evaluate the packet error rate (PER) through actual measurements in an outdoor road scenario, and deduce a close model of the PER for VANETs. Secondly, we introduce a topology-based visibility scheme such that road dimension and geometry can be accounted for, in addition to line-of-sight. We then combine these factors to determine when warning messages (i.e., messages that warn drivers of danger and hazards) are successfully received in a VANET. Through extensive simulations using different road topologies, city maps, and visibility schemes, we show these factors can impact warning message dissemination time and packet delivery rate.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain, under Grant TIN2011-27543-C03-01, and by the Diputacion General de Aragon, under Grant "subvenciones destinadas a la formacion y contratacion de personal investigador".Martínez, FJ.; Fogue, M.; Toh, C.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Manzoni, P. (2013). Computer simulations of VANETs using realistic city topologies. Wireless Personal Communications. 69(2):639-663. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-012-0594-6S639663692Martinez F. J., Toh C.-K., Cano J.-C., Calafate C. T., Manzoni P. (2011) A survey and comparative study of simulators for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal 11(7): 813–828Toh C.-K. (2001) Ad hoc mobile wireless networks: Protocols and systems. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJIEEE 802.11 Working Group. (2010). IEEE standard for information technology—telecommunications and information exchange between systems—local and metropolitan area networks—Specific requirements—Part 11: Wireless LAN medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications amendment 6: Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments.Sommer, C., Eckhoff, D., German, R., & Dressler F. (2011). A computationally inexpensive empirical model of IEEE 802.11p radio shadowing in urban environments. In Eighth international conference on wireless on-demand network systems and services (WONS), pp. 84–90.Bohm, A., Lidstrom, K., Jonsson, M., & Larsson, T. (2010). Evaluating CALM M5-based vehicle-to-vehicle communication in various road settings through field trials. In Proceedings of the 35th IEEE conference on local computer networks (LCN’10), Denver, Colorado, USA, pp. 613–620.Martinez, F. J., Fogue, M., Coll, M., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2010). Assessing the impact of a realistic radio propagation model on VANET scenarios using real maps. In 9th IEEE international symposium on network computing and applications (NCA), Boston, USA, pp. 132–139.Fall, K., & Varadhan, K. (2000). “ns notes and documents,” The VINT project. UC Berkeley, LBL, USC/ISI, and Xerox PARC, February 2000. Available at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-documentation.html .Marinoni, S., & Kari, H. H. (2006). Ad hoc routing protocol performance in a realistic environment. In Proceedings of the international conference on networking, international conference on systems and international conference on mobile communications and learning technologies (ICN/ICONS/MCL 2006), Washington, DC, USA.Mahajan, A., Potnis, N., Gopalan, K., & Wang, A. (2007). Modeling VANET deployment in urban settings. In International workshop on modeling analysis and simulation of wireless and mobile systems (MSWiM 2007), Crete Island, Greece.Suriyapaiboonwattana, K., Pornavalai, C., & Chakraborty, G. (2009). An adaptive alert message dissemination protocol for VANET to improve road safety. In IEEE intlernational conference on fuzzy systems, 2009. FUZZ-IEEE 2009, pp. 1639–1644.Bako, B., Schoch, E., Kargl, F., & Weber, M. (2008). Optimized position based gossiping in VANETs. In Vehicular technology conference, 2008. VTC 2008-Fall. IEEE 68th, pp. 1–5.Martinez, F. J., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2008). Citymob: A mobility model pattern generator for VANETs. In IEEE vehicular networks and applications workshop (Vehi-Mobi, held with ICC), Beijing, China.Torrent-Moreno, M., Santi, P., & Hartenstein, H. (2007). Inter-vehicle communications: Assessing information dissemination under safety constraints. In Proceedings of the 4th annual conference on wireless on demand network systems and services (WONS), Oberguyrgl, Austria.Martinez, F. J., Toh, C.-K., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2009). Realistic radio propagation models (RPMs) for VANET simulations. In IEEE wireless communications and networking conference (WCNC), Budapest, Hungary.Martinez, F. J., Toh, C.-K., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2010). A street broadcast reduction scheme (SBR) to mitigate the broadcast storm problem in VANETs. Wireless personal communications, pp. 1–14. doi: 10.1007/s11277-010-9989-4Ni, S.-Y., Tseng, Y.-C., Chen, Y.-S., & Sheu, J.-P. (1999). The broadcast storm problem in a mobile ad hoc network. In ACM/IEEE international conference on mobile computing and networking (MobiCom 1999), Seattle Washington.Krajzewicz, D., & Rossel, C. (2007). “Simulation of urban mobility (SUMO),” Centre for Applied Informatics (ZAIK) and the Institute of Transport Research at the German Aerospace Centre. Available at http://sumo.sourceforge.net/index.shtml .OpenStreetMap Team. (2009). OpenStreetMap, collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Available at http://www.openstreetmap.org .U.S. Census Bureau. (2009). TIGER, topologically integrated geographic encoding and referencing. Available at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger .Krauss S., Wagner P., Gawron C. (1997) Metastable states in a microscopic model of traffic flow. Physical Review E 55(5): 5597–5602Krajzewicz, D., Hertkorn, G., Rossel, C., & Wagner, P. (2002). SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility)—An open-source traffic simulation. In Proceedings of the 4th middle east symposium on simulation and modelling (MESM2002), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, pp. 183–187

LIFE Adaptamed Layman’s Report. Action E13. LIFE14 CCA/ES/000612

Aguas de Font Vella y Lanjaró

Dating stalagmite from Caverna do Diabo (Devil'S Cave) by TL and EPR techniques

A cylindrical fragment of stalagmite from Caverna do Diabo, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has been studied and dated by thermoluminescence and electron paramagnetic resonance techniques. The thermoluminescence glow curves of stalagmite samples and subsequently gamma irradiated, have shown rise of three peaks at 135, 180 and 265 degrees C. From electron paramagnetic resonance spectra of stalagmite was possible to clearly identify three paramagnetic centers in the g = 2.0 region: Centers I, II and III are due to, CO3- and CO33-, respectively. The additive method was applied to calculate the accumulated dose using thermoluminescence peak at 265 degrees C and the electron paramagnetic resonance signal at g = 1.9973 of CO2- radical. The ages of the different slices of stalagmite were determined from the D-ac-values and D-an-value, obtaining an average of 86410 for central slice, 53421 for second slice, 31490 for third slice and 46390 years B.P. for the central region of upper end.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Fis, Rua Matao,187 Cidade Univ, BR-05508090 Sao Paulo, SP, BrazilUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Dept Ciencias Mar, Rua Doutor Carvalho de Mendonca 144, BR-11070100 Santos, SP, BrazilIPEN CNEN SP, Inst Pesquisas Energet & Nucl, Av Prof Lineu Prestes,2242 Cidade Univ, BR-05508000 Sao Paulo, SP, BrazilUniv Nacl San Agustin, Fac Ciencias Nat & Formales, Escuela Profes Fis, Av Independencia S-N, Arequipa, PeruUniv Sao Paulo, Escola Politecn, Dept Engn Met & Mat, Av Prof Mello Moraes 2463, BR-05508030 Sao Paulo, SP, BrazilDepartamento de Ciências do Mar, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Rua Doutor Carvalho de Mendonça, 144, 11070-100 Santos, SP, BrazilFAPESP: 2014/03085-0CAPES: BEX-9612130Web of Scienc

Molecular and in vivo studies of a glutamate-class prolyl-endopeptidase for coeliac disease therapy

The digestion of gluten generates toxic peptides, among which a highly immunogenic proline-rich 33-mer from wheat α-gliadin, that trigger coeliac disease. Neprosin from the pitcher plant is a reported prolyl endopeptidase. Here, we produce recombinant neprosin and its mutants, and find that full-length neprosin is a zymogen, which is self-activated at gastric pH by the release of an all-β pro-domain via a pH-switch mechanism featuring a lysine plug. The catalytic domain is an atypical 7+8-stranded β-sandwich with an extended active-site cleft containing an unprecedented pair of catalytic glutamates. Neprosin efficiently degrades both gliadin and the 33-mer in vitro under gastric conditions and is reversibly inactivated at pH > 5. Moreover, co-administration of gliadin and the neprosin zymogen at the ratio 500:1 reduces the abundance of the 33-mer in the small intestine of mice by up to 90%. Neprosin therefore founds a family of eukaryotic glutamate endopeptidases that fulfils requisites for a therapeutic glutenase.This study was supported in part by grants from Spanish and Catalan public and private bodies (grant/fellowship references PID2019-107725RG-I00 to F.X.G.-R., A.R.B., U.E. and T.G.; BES-2016-076877 to S.R.M., BES-2015-074583 to L.A.M., Beatriu de Pinós 2018BP00163 to U.E., 2017SGR3 and Fundació La Marató de TV3 201815 to F.X.G.-R., U.E., A.R.B. and T.G.)

In vivo trypanosomicidal activity of imidazole- or pyrazole-based benzo[ g ]phthalazine derivatives against acute and chronic phases of chagas disease

The in vivo trypanosomicidal activity of the imidazole-based benzo[g]phthalazine derivatives 1−4 and of the new related pyrazole-based compounds 5 and 6 has been studied in both the acute and chronic phases of Chagas disease. As a rule, compounds 1−6 were more active and less toxic than benznidazole in the two stages of the disease, and the monosubstituted derivatives 2, 4, and 6 were more effective than their disubstituted analogs. Feasible mechanisms of action of compounds 1−6 against the parasite have been explored by considering their inhibitory effect on the Fe-SOD enzyme, the nature of the excreted metabolites and the ultrastructural alterations produced. A complementary histopathological analysis has confirmed that the monosubstituted derivatives are less toxic than the reference drug, with the behavior of the imidazole-based compound 4 being especially noteworthy.The authors thank the Santander-Universidad Complutense Research Program (Grant GR58/08-921371-891), the Spanish MEC Project (Grant CGL2008-03687-E/BOS), and the MCINN Projects (CTQ2009-14288-C04-01 and Consolider CSD2010-00065) for financial support